Bruce Willis is one of the greats—he’s starred in everything from Pulp Fiction to the Sixth Sense and so many more award-winning films. We’re pretty sure he’s an actor who has never had a flop of a movie! However, as they say, all good things must end and Willis is stepping away from his acting career definitively.

The news came from ex-wife Demi More after he was diagnosed with a serious medical condition. “Our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” she had told the public.

Aphasia is a brain disorder that can affect a person’s ability to communicate and understand language. According to the Mayo Clinic, common symptoms of aphasia include speaking or writing words and sentences that don’t make sense or not being able to always understand what other people are saying.

It turns out that the diagnosis didn’t just come out of nowhere. In fact, some crew members say that Willis has been showing signs of cognitive decline for a long time—years, in fact. Because Willis is still such a great actor, he remained in high demand—it’s just that his colleagues had to get used to working with him in different ways. “After the first day of working with Bruce, I could see it firsthand and I realized that there was a bigger issue at stake here and why I had been asked to shorten his lines,” said Mike Burns, the director of “Out of Death.” When filing the movie, Burns was actually assigned to cut down Willis’ scenes due to his actions into one day of filming, which was about 25 pages of dialogue.

Additionally, it was not uncommon for Willis to be fed his lines through an earpiece while filming certain roles, which is a common practice among other actors with aphasia.

Check out the video below to learn more about Willis’ condition and diagnosis, as well as other actors who have suffered through the same thing.

In addition, though Willis isn’t about to film any new movies any time soon, he does have a few films in post-production we can look forward to. The video below covers those, too!

This is certainly some upsetting news for Hollywood, and Willis’ entire family. Did you ever have any doubts about Wills’ cognitive health in his films? Do you know anyone who has aphasia?